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5 thoughts on “NBI: To Blog or Not to Blog – That is the Question”

Yes, it’s apples and oranges for a start. Like advising someone not to become a poet because novels sell better and novelists are more famous. Kind of beside the point. Hardly anyone makes money out of poetry or becomes famous but there’s no shortage of poets (more’s the pity, some might say). If you get the urge to versify you just have to let it out. Same with blogging.

But also as I pointed out in the comments, I’m not convinced Tobold’s argument is even true. When was the last time you heard a Reddit poster on national radio being asked for his comments on an issue of the day? Bloggers, on the other hand, turn up relatively frequently, or they do on the BBC.

And then it depends what you mean by “famous”. One of the most peculiar things that ever happened to me was when I was in my late 30s and a guy who’d been temping for a few weeks in the place where I worked came up to me and asked me if I used to write for comics fanzines. I said I used to a while back and he produced a copy of a zine I’d written for about five years before. He told me he’d read all my stuff in various zines and quoted stuff back to me that I’d forgotten I’d written.

That was particularly weird because it happened out of context in “real” life but in blogging it happens all the time – only yesterday I clicked through a link to a blog I’d never heard of and the first post I came across began with a quote from Inventory Full. I don’t know what level of “fame” Tobold is using as a benchmark but if you want to define “fame” as “being recognized by people who you have never met” then blogging seems to be a pretty good way to find it to me.

Let’s clarify in the comments that you’re certainly established enough to not require any links or pageviews, and that -I- am prone to exaggeration for effect, because I’m certainly not above using little writing tricks to encourage people to read on. :)